Customer Reviews

Latin Literature: A History

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Gian Biagio Conte's 'Letteratura Latina' is a work of brilliance that will probably stand as the foremost catalogue and compendium of Latin Literary History for a long time, and I cannot imagine what scholar(s) possess the right mixture of insight and brevity to replace it. Conte's treatment of Latin Literature is honest, intensely informative, void of pretention and, much to the anticipated surprise of lay readers, rather engaging in the contemporary Johns Hopkins English translation. The simultaneous yet uncompromised treatment of Roman politics, poetry, law, literature, art and history is certain to interest readers of all disciplines.

I agree with a previous reviewer that there are some editorial problems with this English translation/revision of Conte's work (e.g. "Revelations" for the last book of the Bible -- most literate people know that the book is titled "Revelation"). Nonetheless this is the best available reference history of Latin literature, replete with facts as well as appreciation. Coverage extends well into the Middle Ages, with brief discussions of even minor figures. This book is clearly to be preferred over the Latin volume of the Cambridge History of Classical Literature, which (as the preface to Conte's book says) is just a collection of essays "varying in approach and critical acumen...while presupposing the reader's command of all the elementary facts".

My review of this book is, sadly, mixed. First, I must say, I intend to reread it soon, it's the best Latin Literary History I know of, and there are many useful features including a cookbook format and many appendices of terms. However, the book is also a bit of a hash. When I read the foreword apparatus by the editor I realized that we were not to have a properly edited book. This book was translated and re-hashed around by a committee. Two scholars adapted it for the American readership, so the gushy editor tells us. We were not given anywhere near enough information about what was done by whom on what principles. There was no translator's statement. I could not detect the original author's voice. I fear the editorial team did not take its work seriously enough. All through the book there were repetitions, inconsistencies, as though different people were responsible for different sections which were later assembled and inadequately edited. Three examples. 1) Nowhere in the book is the crucial term latifundium defined. 2) in one place the term floruit is used, in another place "flourishing", and nowhere is it defined. It was made to sound like 60, when surely it is 40. 3) We are not given Ambrose's full name nor his death date. Surely we know them. Whereas this information was standardly given for the other church fathers. I could go on and on. If you think these are trivial examples, then this book is for you. What this book needed above all was a better editor. What it really needed above all was the sifting and sorting by a single grand mind. And perhaps that is what Gian Biagio Conte is. But perhaps his work has been layered over by these other American minds. There were in fact many times while reading that I felt swept up with the superior insights of the book into this literature. Of course, the history of Rome is a bitter one. I hate its trajectory. And its literature is as derivative as European ones. Rome is the first humanistic culture, based on the mishmash of archaic, classic, and hellenistic greek, mixed with some native forms. All this the book shows, though more in brilliant flashes than in grand sweep. I wish the bones of the scholarship had been presented more. It's important to know who has said what about what. Conte does mention the problems. But I had this sense, beyond the cookbook hash, that there were white spaces that were not being discussed. In the end I suspect Conte has been done a disservice that I only hope can be corrected for round two.